Booklist Review

Patterson's latest is something new. No, he's still hiring other writers to do his typing, but here the colossus of commercial fiction scripts a dystopian future. It's 2061, and Hays Baker is one of the Elites, genetically enhanced humans who rule over the regular-old humans known as skunks. He's a golden boy at the Agency of Change, a kind of supercop who fights crime by going skunk hunting. But in an unsurprising twist, he isn't who his superiors think he is or even who he thinks he is and soon learns what it's like to be part of the oppressed majority. As usual for Patterson, the characters are cardboard, the dialogue is wooden, and the plot is papier-mâché. Even the fun of imagining the future doesn't get his creative juices flowing. This reads like deservedly forgotten sf from the 1950s. Cars fly, there's a household robot named Metallico, a social-guidance implant is called Cyrano 3000, and New Lake City's bad neighborhood is Beta-Town. And there's unintended irony in the book's message. Patterson's straw man is Elite society, a bunch of shallow, consumerist idiots who live for cheap diversion. Only humans can still create art. After reading this book, you have to ask, Is Patterson human . . . or an Elite?--Graff, Keir Copyright 2010 Booklist